Today's principal commercial computer user interface is the GUI (Graphical User Interface). It is based upon two simple user interface elements: the mouse controlled cursor and the pull-down menu. These elements have also been used in tandem to enable hypertext linking.
The current implementations of a GUI has serious limitations when used to navigate through large databases. It presents tree-like structures of file names, file contents and links on the Web. In doing so, 95% of the time it presents lists as vertical or horizontal screen displays. Just as the graphical format display of telephone books, GUI's tree-structures relegates the user to a tedious search through lists, and lists of lists, reached through only two features: scroll up and down buttons and links. In either case, the complete content of the database is not effectively presented and the format soon exhausts the user's attention span, making GUI inefficient at best for speedy navigation and location of desired content.
Numerous hierarchical tree-like structures, branching and sub-branching methodologies have been developed to ease this limitation. Their common flaw lies in the method of data presentation. The method of presentation has but one purpose: the communication of information to the user's mind. Thus, the presentation problem should be approached from the point of view of the mind's "information acquirement" abilities. A step towards higher cognitive processing should not ignore such information acquirement factors as differentiation, elimination, in-depth analysis and context identification with formal commitment to memory.